Today we’d like to introduce you to Jack X. Zhou
Hi Jack X., thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Happily! I am an illustrator/Designer born in China and moved to the States by myself to study abroad and pursue my interest in art. My early life in the U.S. was like venturing into a new world full of strange and curious visuals to a young Chinese boy as I vaguely reminisce about childhood in Hangzhou, my hometown.
Growing up being a Chinese single child who loves to doodle monsters was not easy; unluckily, good scores were far more applaudiable than some pretty images among the Chinese school students and teachers. I am very very fortunate to have a supportive mother, and a father who slowly learned to be accepting, which is pretty rare in a Chinese family around my time. My passion/ambition for art began to spark in my childhood, mainly due to my mom’s unwavering ideology against grindset-hell and rigid conservative societal norms in the Chinese early education system. These outlandish obstacles have set me off on a great start mentally as I prepare my way to the States to gain my creative freedom and skills to express.
Moving from China to the U.S. in my youth, my personal growth and education underwent different teaching styles, and my artistic career has slowly formed into a tangible path along the way. The studying and living environments of RGNS and RISD both provide me a creatively stimulating experience. Although challenging the U.S. alone as a teen comes with its own problems, the freedom of expression and the community I build for myself slowly eased off the shackles and haze that burdened me from the academic hunger game hell in my childhood.
Even though I am on my way to be a more established illustrator as I was recognized by my community and worked on many creatively engaging projects, my works are still heavily inspired by my cultural origin and I reminisce the details of my childhood and hometown.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Haha, is the road ever smooth? Surely, my path to where I am today has many fortunate moments, making it out of American high school and art school alive, being employed right after graduation, and can now afford basic living alone… But it certainly was a hella bumpy ride as well.
As I commenced my solo journey to the estranged land of the U.S. at the age of fourteen, creatively and culturally, my life is quite vividly split into two worlds, physically and mentally. Homesickness and isolation has often been the main struggle as I pursue my dreams in the foreign land away with loved ones and the society I was raised in. Moreover, I often dealt with my diaspora identity and endless wars of Western and Eastern influences in my head, which set up creative blocks and periods of being utterly lost as not only an artist but also as a human being. These frustrations later motivated me to aim to use my illustrations to “heal, fortify and bring this broken world together”.
Furthermore, college and postgraduate are the perfect moments of life to have existential crises. The real world hit me hard and had forcibly pulled me out of my comfort zone, putting my ambition to the test. However, I gradually learned to examine myself inwardly, and it allowed me to navigate conflicting ideas and find my own voice and originality, which the thoughts later sediment into my creations. Again and again, by my own efforts and my own decisions, I was able to venture further than I was expecting of myself as a little Chinese boy, and knowing and loving exactly what I want to do is something incredibly helpful to my survival in this journey and grants me the unforeseen confidence and comfort I never had.
To this day, despite the challenges and uncertainties I’ve faced, knowing that my burning passion and ambition for art remains steadfast and untarnished is something I take immense pride in and can comfortably rely on.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a mentally tormented artist who illustrates with passion and love to withstand unwaveringly facing the height and depth of my artistic journey.
As an artist, I recognize myself as a bard-core storyteller to heal, fortify, and bring the world together. With my culturally diasporic experience, I aim for my creations to manifest as a distillation of this journey I embark on hoping for the connection to like-minded communities along the way. Besides constructing complex isometric compositions with hundreds of figures and blinding colors, I also value simplicity and like to convey my stories symbolically, yet comprehensively through simple shapes and limited colors. This is the essence of how I create my artworks, as this expressive method allows me to navigate thoughts related to childhood memories, homesickness, a quest for belongingness, and the nuanced experience of being a first-generation gay Chinese immigrant in the United States.
This past year of 2024, my works have been recognized by the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, and internationally awarded by the Association of Illustrators and Directory of Illustration! As I speedrun to unlock all these illustration achievements, I have also exhibited in the Blue Triangle Gallery of Boston’s Chinatown, helped create posters and advertising assets for D.J. Tennis in the LA Chinatown, and most excitingly illustrated for the New York Times, The InQueery Vol.III and Motif Magazine!
I have also worked as a full-time designer/illustrator at a creative digital media agency. Although my task varied based on different projects and clients, I specialized in the pre-production phase of the pipeline to ideate and visualize concepts, which was a very design-heavy skill. The designing process is precise and meticulous due to its problem-solving nature as a service instead of an expression, which protects the art-making that I love and is personal to me. I enjoy working in a team and studying the minds of people and the industry. I’ve also learned many valuable skills such as marketing, branding, and presenting my works to the world in a chic corporate fashion, allowing me to effectively communicate my stories to a wider audience.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Well, the Covid-19 was definitely a crisis but also a moment of reflection to me and my creative style. Looking back now, I believe everyone in the world had too much free time to overthink, panic and be depressed, trapped indoors and allowed social media to be our only windows to see the world. The state of the world was portrayed bleak and chaotic to us and that inspired me to produce more personal pieces while going through my digital university era.
Trapped at home without access to art supplies, I guessed I had no choice but to learn and experiment with digital media in my works, and it happened to be a turning point of my creative style. I soon fell in love with this new world of art making and began to explore and engage in both digital and analog methods for the rest of my college experience such as 3d modeling, risograph, silkscreen print and woodcut. The restriction on method and resource of Covid-19 allowed a boost in creative thinking, which I benefit a lot from in my works.
On another hand, culturally and socially, it was a period of lost and reflection for me mainly because of all the intensive civil right movements and its news media that filled my social feed. I began to really re-evaluate my identity being a Chinese in America away from home and loved ones. What was the goal of my art? What do I want to say in my work? How would my voice be heard? I feel the covid years are the perfect time to rhetorically question and criticize one’s own purpose and reset new goals.
Covid helped me to learn, as a storyteller, I aim for my inspirations to manifest as a distillation of my journey, conveyed symbolically, yet comprehensively, through shapes and colors. Likewise, this is the essence of how I create my artworks, as this expressive method allows me to navigate thoughts related to childhood memories, homesickness, a quest for belonging, and the nuanced experience of being a first-generation gay Chinese immigrant in the United States.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jackxzhou.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackx.zhou/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-x-zhou-b012651ba/
Image Credits
GC Photography, Zorro Hill, Franco Zacha, Black Math
